Patrick O'Neill: Solitary Confinement

The following column by Ted Vaden originally appeared in lastgaffe.com, an online blog for people in their retirement years.

I wrote to you recently about Patrick O’Neill, the Garner, NC, Catholic pacifist who is serving 14 months in federal prison for following his conscience. That is, he broke into a Naval base in Georgia and defaced a monument to nuclear warfare. The official sentence was conspiracy, trespassing and damage to government property.

Patrick since has written to me – a pencil-scrawled letter on yellow legal paper – to express gratitude for the people who have sent him letters of support after reading of his ordeal on this blog.  He recounted a harrowing tale of his recent hospitalization after experiencing a heart flutter in his cellblock. I’ll let Patrick tell the story from here:

“I have been in solitary confinement for two weeks, following a 4-day stay in the hospital about 45 minutes away. While in the hospital, I was under armed guard (2 corrections officers at all times) who kept me in leg irons and chained to the bed 24-7. I was only out of the bed (always in leg irons) for brief tests. I was expected to use a handheld urinal instead of the toilet….

“The guards worked 8-12 hour shifts over the four days. (They basically ignored me, but one of them I became friends with.) I listened to their conversations and realized some of them were working overtime at close to $50 an hour, so the cost of guarding me for those 4 days was likely in the $5,000 to $10,000 range. Your tax dollars at work.

“I spent my birthday (March 27) in the so-called ‘Special Housing Unit,’ AKA ‘The Hole,’ and I may be in here for Easter as well. So this Lenten season is unlike any other I’ve ever experienced (harder than the year I did a juice-fast all 40 days for Peace in Iraq and lost 30 pounds.) I really do thank God daily for my suffering, but I do have my moments when I try not to think about the fact that I’ve now been in a 9x5-foot room for 13 days and counting without the door opening once. I did feel a little stir-crazy one night and paced and recited the Rosary and felt better. I’m not as tough as I used to be, that’s for sure.”

Patrick’s wife Mary told me that she finally had received a phone call from him on April 7 and that he had been released from solitary confinement. He had been placed there because of COVID. He still has not been vaccinated but was returned to his cellblock of more than 100 inmates. The disease reportedly has infected hundreds of inmates and staff at the Ohio federal prison complex where he is incarcerated.

In a recent letter to supporters, Patrick wrote, “Some of the men in this room have been here for more than 10 years, many have 10 years to go! And almost all for charges that warranted placement in a ‘low security’ prison that has cubicles instead of cells. That means the Bureau of Prisons finds all the men in Elkton are low risk for any kind of violence, which begs the question – Why are they here? Why didn’t they get compassionate home confinement due to Covid? Why didn’t they get some alternative sentence to years in prison? Answer: because the U.S. Prison-Industrial Complex is a self-perpetuating institution that employs thousands of people doing unnecessary jobs, such as watching TV in Patrick’s hospital room.”

Patrick O’Neill is age 65. He and his wife Mary are the parents of eight children and are grandparents. He will complete his prison term in March of 2022 – maybe by Christmas, if gets out on good behavior.

Patrick O'Neill: A Birthday Behind Bars

The following column by Ted Vaden originally appeared in lastgaffe.com, an online blog for people in their retirement years.

I would like to tell you about my friend Patrick O’Neill.

Patrick and his wife Mary live in Garner, where they operate a Catholic relief shelter for women and children in crisis. The couple raised 8 children of their own there, and they now are proud grandparents.

Next Saturday, March 27, Patrick turns 65. He will observe his birthday living in a prison cellblock at the Oakton Federal Correction Institute in Lisbon, Ohio, where he is serving a 14-month sentence for breaking into a U.S. Navy base to protest nuclear weapons.

Patrick is a man of unimaginable faith and adherence to his convictions. A longtime pacifist, he is one of the so-called Kings Bay Plowshares 7, a group of peace activists who on April 4, 2018, cut through a security fence and slipped into the King’s Bay Naval Submarine Base in St. Mary’s, Ga. King’s Bay is the world’s largest nuclear sub facility, where six Trident submarines bearing nuclear-tipped missiles are berthed.

The group of activists chose the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to protest the nuclear weapons stored at King’s Bay. Patrick was apprehended banging on a monument to nuclear warfare with a hammer made of melted-down guns.

The seven protestors, all Catholic pacifists, were convicted in 2019 in federal court in Georgia, on charges of conspiracy, trespassing and damage to government property. They pleaded not guilty, saying they had entered the base not to commit a crime but to prevent one - “omnicide,” from nuclear warfare. They were sentenced last fall to terms ranging up to 33 months. Patrick was sentenced to 14 months and entered the Ohio prison on Jan. 14. With time served and good behavior, he could be released in 10 months.

Even though Patrick is in a low-security facility, his incarceration has been anything but easy. First, there is the threat of COVID-19 infection. Hundreds of inmates and staff in the Elkton facility have been infected, and nine inmates have died of COVID. A federal judge denied Patrick’s request to delay the start of his sentence until vaccines would be available for inmates.

Because of the infection, the prison is in lockdown, which means prisoners cannot receive visitors and are confined to their cellblock. “My block includes a range of 110-120 men living in a room with bodies always in constant motion as men move about looking to pass time in meaningful ways,” he wrote in a recent letter to supporters. “Many guys speak too loudly and there’s a public address system where guards make shrieking, sometimes shocking announcements throughout the day. The sensory overload is relentless, something akin to low-level torture.”

Patrick reports that many of the inmates are in prison for sex offenses – not for touching children or for manufacturing porn, but for viewing or sharing it on computers. They receive little or no rehabilitation and are treated by guards and other inmates as the lowest caste in prison society.

It is also a race-reversal society.
“Here, in an ironic reversal of fortune, whites are second-class citizens, so I have to learn and follow the rules, rules which are made by the inmates,” he writes. “I see it as my required affirmative action.”

Patrick is an indefatigable spirit. I first came to know him 28 years ago, when he was a reporter at The Chapel Hill News, where I was editor.  He covered UNC like a bloodhound, producing such scoops as the story that 50 coaches and Ram’s Club officials were receiving free loaner cars from 45 auto dealers in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. Among the beneficiaries were basketball coach Dean Smith (a Cadillac Sedan de Ville) and former star Phil Ford. The dealers were made members of the Rams Club and given free season’s tickets to football and basketball games.

Within a month after Patrick’s stories appeared, UNC cancelled the program.

Another Patrick story was about cars with Rams Club stickers being allowed to park in fire lanes outside Kenan Stadium on football Saturdays. Shortly after, then-Athletics Director John Swofford (now ACC Commissioner) encountered me on campus to ask why the newspaper was so negative about the athletics program. I told Swofford we were just covering the news and told Patrick to keep doing his job – which was not necessary to tell him.

Over the years, Patrick has continued as a freelance journalist, but he has devoted himself foremost to his Catholic activism protesting nuclear arms, the death penalty, racial injustice and mistreatment of immigrants. In his peace work, all in the form of nonviolent protest, he has served more than two years in jail and prison, even before this current term.

After Patrick was sentenced last October, he emerged from the courthouse with an upbeat attitude. The judge, moved by testimony from Patrick’s children and others, gave him a lesser sentence than the 26 months allowed by law.

He said then: “I’m pleased with the outcome. I’m sad that I’m going to be away from my family for quite a while, but I think that the purpose of the Kings Bay Plowshares was to be willing to face the possibility of redemptive suffering, and so it is. It’s not the most severe thing. It’s certainly something that I can tolerate.”

In prison, not surprisingly, he has been an advocate for his fellow inmates, seeking better treatment and more opportunity for pastoral care. He says he sees his sacrifice as a blessing:

“I pray in gratitude each morning for redemptive suffering and humility. The unpleasantness of solitary is also a gift, as I experience a small taste of the suffering that most human beings face every day all over the world. I hope to feel a little more empathy for my sisters and brothers who barely survive in the world.”

Only Patrick O’Neill would see forced isolation in a COVID-invested prison as a gift.

Happy Birthday, Patrick. Happy Easter.